Granny’s smile has lots of secrets and lots of memories in it. She is always smiling, beaming; we can also count her wrinkles rising from her cheeks to her closed eyes; eyes shining with childlike brightness, watery eyes speaking the language of love.
It is early morning and everyone in the house is running hither and thither. Mummy is cooking food and packing the tiffin-boxes. The children are late once again and Daddy is going to give them a lift to the school. But Daddy himself cannot find his tie and the green file and somehow Mummy is managing everything right from the kitchen.
In this daily drama we see Granny sitting in the balcony, she is combing her grand-daughter’s plaits; Granny talks about her late grandmother who use to tie her plaits, to which her little granddaughter giggles up and says, ‘Granny you also had a Granny?’
Mummy shouts from the kitchen as the clock declares it is 8. Everyone is late!
In this relay race, this cute family is asked to stop and pose for a photograph. Daddy says no but the children agree and Mummy is caught between them; while everyone else hesitates only to agree in the end, the granddaughter brings Granny inside and both of them settle comfortably on the sofa for the photograph.
Say Cheese! Click!
Daddy is awkwardly smiling with a bad tie-shirt combination making him look funny; Mummy is smiling nicely and is hiding her apron behind her; the children are looking full of life and sleepy at the same time; the granddaughter is hugging her Granny and saying cheese loudly; Granny is smiling peacefully.
Daddy, Mummy and the children wish Granny a good-bye, she waves back at them from the balcony. They leave in their car and get mixed with the ‘bhroom-honk-honk-bhroom’ crowd on the road.
When Granny is asked about the brightness in her eyes and the secret behind her smile, she laughs musically and says, ‘thank you very much’.
Enjoying the scene from her gallery she seems to be waiting for somebody. She walks slowly to the kitchen like there is no need to hurry, this is how blessed she is, maybe this the reason behind her smile.
When we are about to leave the house, she calls us and asks us to meet her friend. Back in the gallery, Granny is feeding a stale roti to a crow with extreme joy in her eyes.
She indicates us to take her photograph with the crow. She is already saying cheese. Click!
The mountains are so grand; I realised it that day when I climbed one. The green velvety zigzag stretch left me overwhelmed.
A thought caught my attention and told me how beautiful and majestic the mountains were, how incredibly small I was, how peacefully colourful the surroundings were and how sublime the music played by the wind was.
I saw the clouds and they saw me; I blushed quietly. With my feet in the wet green grass, I stood there enjoying the drizzle. I sat on a calm rock calmly and opened the notebook. I couldn’t write for some reason, so I drew the scene instead.
Have you ever felt the same? Like when you feel something you cannot describe in words or otherwise? When the smell of an old book takes you back in a different century?
As if the leaf that fell near you was meant to fall there so that you could pick it up and observe it? And that the glamorous city lights were talking to each other and the moon was talking to you?
What about the smiley face drawn by a passer-by on a dusty car that reminds you of the one you had drawn? Have you ever felt the still mind?
The drawing that I made took the shape of the yin-yang without my knowledge. Opposites complement each other. I sat near the window and thought about it; the sun passed by and the moon came with white light very quickly and in the shadow, I saw the light and immediately, I agreed.
I again looked at that drawing, in gratitude but the drawing was no longer the same… there were dark green mountains and blue sky, white clouds and green grass and me, sitting on the calm rock calmly. And I looked through the window…
I can see mountains from the window, I’ll take this window along.
That feeling of sadness when you realise that you could have done something else, something better but you cannot because time has defeated you, leaving you alone with the mighty Fate.
That moment when your heart is full of love and your mind full of confusion and you hesitate to take a step forward; sometimes you console yourself and sometimes you scold yourself…all you are left with is pain.
Pain is known to everyone who knows love, hope, desire and ego.
Why don’t we get rid of this pain and live happily ever after?
Maybe because we need pain…just to understand the importance of everything around us, to learn to value every little thing.
Maybe because pain teaches us to move forward, it gives us only one choice which is to change with time.
If seen in this light, pain helps us to realise our transient nature but not to lament over it, rather cherish every second of it and to make the best of it.
Yes, this will mean to be ALIVE always but this is just how we should live, shouldn’t we?
Why be in grief when neither the reason for the grief nor you, the sufferer, will stay forever? What stays is the wish to live life to the fullest.
I am walking on a mysterious road… what passes me enters me and then it vanishes, leaving a feeling within me, giving me pain and hope… I walk ahead in the search of love… I cannot see the path, just one step after the other… it is thrilling… the silky air around me is what I can feel and the music of the cosmos that whispers in my ears, telling me to hum along.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
Summer holidays and not so hot day, lying under the tree I peeped endlessly to see the sky. There were no clouds but now and then few birds crossed my vision. As the sun made me close my eyes, I tried to concentrate on the green leaves of the tree but instead I fell asleep. I dreamt happy and bizarre dreams, Alice like dreams. My dreams were colourful, the child’s world.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
Sitting on the study table and with the dull words stubbornly standing in front of me, my mind’s eye tricked each word and I soon reached the future. My future was always perfect – my clothes, my career, my life – everything just smooth and beautiful; boundless time to have fun with friends, family and a special someone. But when my mind’s eye met the alarm clock on the table, I quickly re-entered the tedious world of the textbooks, giving in and apologising, only to trick this world once again.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
It is raining and I am standing near the window, watching droplets join each other and run away. My mind is full of umpteenth things but I am lost, lost as I look at someone walking with an umbrella, fighting the rain and the mud on the road and I think about this unknown person. Though the unknown person has left but the thought remains. I take a sigh and decide to get back to work but I keep standing there.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
Living far away from my loved ones, I feel empty. Before tears fall, my mother calls and I say hello with a smile.
A funny incident that happened in college and how it became the topic of every discussion in my friend circle makes my eyes wide and I joyfully jump back in time.
Also, when I think about the moment when I said ‘Ciao’ to others and their comments and walked on my path, doodling something on the notebook and then closing it feeling my ears getting hot. At this moment someone definitely calls, someone definitely comes and talks and talks and I forget. I simply forget! But it comes to me every time I am alone and every time I just move forward.
Just like the fading fog, that fragrant memory faded away.
Shadow doesn’t like to take bath at all, the wet hair confuses him, he licks himself but still remains wet. This is what Shadow told me.
Once Shadow was happily sitting in the veranda then suddenly he saw something in the garden… and then, Shadow ran towards it. But before he could see it properly, it flew away. Shadow’s Mamma told him that it is called a birdie and that they can fly. Shadow now notices the birds all the time, they fly in the blue sky and vanish, sometimes they sit on trees and sing. Some sing sweetly and some talk ceaselessly. Shadow likes them; this is what he told me.
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Lalaa-la-laaa, sings Shadow. [Image by J Rumi]
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Two words that Shadow used – ‘happily’ and ‘suddenly’ – somehow looked magnificently beautiful to me.
Whenever he talks to me, he uses these two words a lot –happily and suddenly. He is happy to get a yummy lunch and then suddenly he jumps from one place to another and again becomes happy. This superb cycle of being happy and then having a sudden emotional change and then in the end being happy again…wow! Amazing life!
When there is a sudden change, one can feel anything like anger, hunger, excitement, retirement, sleepy, weepy, and more; the best part is you will be happy again. This is the kind of life Shadow lives, he doesn’t know it, he doesn’t need to know because he is simply living it. Shadow is happy at the end of the day!
There are beautiful colours around me, pink mostly. Sometimes the softness in the atmosphere changes into wetness which after inhaling makes me happy and light.
I am also holding an umbrella, it is black in colour. I open it and I am dragged backwards by the musical wind. I am laughing and loving the moment. With my flying umbrella, I spin and float here and there like a leaf.
I always wanted to be a leaf, I am serene.
Keep dreaming, keep living, freely. Image from Pixabay.
I read somewhere that ‘definition destroys’ and I think I believe in it. This is this and that is that has never worked for me, only feelings have.
Defining simplifies things, yes it does and makes things understandable, but it also makes things complex and difficult… all the definitions of the macro and the micro world does not help in resolving the problems, the inequality in the world.
Though necessary, it often becomes too confusing and an indigestible half-baked fact.
To define is to confine; actually, I don’t know but it rhymes perfectly and rings true.
I just hate it, this definition thing, the most when dreams are analysed so as to reach a definition. Please, let us keep our dreams as a mystery for the mystery on our smiling face in the sleeping state continues.
Endless footprints following footprints/
When suddenly a few of them rise/
To bloom like a flower.
Greetings!
A storyteller, following the ancient tradition of cave chroniclers, standing in vrikshasana (the tree pose) on a hill top (it is sunny, but windy), breathing in and out stories (relishing it all, but at times overwhelmed), declares animatedly that she will continue to – tell stories, share rare story gems, and connect with the pacy universe while also keeping the website ad-free.
Big thanks to my readers. Stay tuned!
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Ya-hoy!
Chiming Stories (formerly Home Chimes)
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A Tribute to Jean-Luc Godard, the Film Philologist who Reinvented Cinema.
Yes fly! For walking on the second track is dull and usual, but dreaming high, high, high requires tools. Tools like the right pair of shoes, a chirpy, gritty soul that eats butter-jam dreams, a soul that drinks milky-milky creams.
Silver cascade shimmering the night sky, music to the waves and surreal beauty to the eyes, the Moon loves the art of discipline.
It may be difficult to believe for the Moon’s splendour defies time, it stupefies the clock, it follows the path of a dreamer, but how could this be possible if the Moon knew not discipline?
In this moment, I am a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I am complete and incomplete, I am pleased and uncertain, I wish for nothing and I know I have to wait.
Because the distance covered reminds me of the hurdles I have crossed and the ones I could not, it reminds me of a throbbing past and a dreamy future and it reminds me of how much time is left.
Meredith and the Green Lake
Illimitable Splendour
A joy so complete without any rise or fall, so free without any time corners, so real without true being false, false being true.
